Christian Crier
Here are seven Bible verses about the sin of lust and how to fight it.
Matthew 5:28 “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Just as Jesus sees hating someone as murdering them in their heart, so too does Jesus equate lusting in the heart as adultery of the heart. He earlier said “that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matt 5:22). Sometimes these barbs or insults are innocent but other times they are how the person really feels about someone (maybe us!) and if they could, they’d likely do them harm…or worse, so lust in our mind is lust in our heart and lust is sin and it is adultery if it’s about a woman or man who is not our spouse.
First Corinthians 6:18 “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.”
If you did a search in the Bible and entered “lust” and “flee,” you get lots of results so the idea is obviously when you are tempted to sin, run. Don’t sit and ponder it or let it in the eye-gate but run away from it as fast as you can. The worse part about sexual immorality is where all unrepentant sexually immoral people end us (Rev 21:8). They are really sinning against their own body, not that it doesn’t hurt the other person too, but whoever is joined with a prostitute, male or female, “is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her (or him)? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh” (1st Cor 6:16).
First Thessalonians 4:3-5 “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.”
Paul wasn’t just commanding the church to live a pure and holy life but to abstain from sexual immorality, telling them “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1st Cor 6:9-10).
Second Timothy 2:22 “So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”
James, Jesus’ half-brother, tells us that “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:14-15) so no one can “say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13). Why would God tempt us to sin and then tell us dozens and dozens of times in His Word to “flee youthful lusts” and “flee from sexual immorality?” The facts are that God calls on all of us who believe to live a life that is pleasing to God.
Colossians 3:5 “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”
If we walk according to the Spirit and not allow ourselves to be pulled along by our fleshly desires, we won’t tolerate sin in our life, but there is a dangerous point of “no return.” When we keep sinning, we become less sensitive to sin. The Holy Spirit, time and again, will convict us, but when we suppress that conviction, we become less sensitive to His prompting. Like a callous on our hand, we start losing feeling and after a while, we could be burning our fingers and not even know it. Such is how deceiving sin can be.
Job 31:1 “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?”
No that we’ll ever be sinless in this life, but hopefully, we’ll sin less over time. The Apostle Paul writes that we should “walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal 5:16). Walking in the Spirit, if you notice, is capitalized and so is the Third Person of the Trinity. We know that the Spirit helps us walk in Christ and He always points us to Christ and seeks to have us glorify Christ, but if we don’t take our eyes off of ungodly images immediately, we’ll be walking and seeing in the flesh and that leads to nowhere good.
First Timothy 6:11 “But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.”
The Apostle Paul had instructed Timothy to flee those things and pursue godliness, but what “things” was Timothy to flee from? If we back up a few verses we can see that it includes lusting in the heart for things like money or craving for other things (1st Tim 6:6-10) and lusting after what others have is still sin; it’s called coveting. It could be coveting your neighbor’s job, home, car, and yes, his wife or her husband. This too is seen as adultery of the heart, and although the actual physical act is far worse, God sees it as such and God will not hold those guiltless who refuse to repent of it.
Conclusion
The Apostle John reminds us that “all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1st John 2:16) but we’ve read that we must flee, make a covenant with our eyes, and pursue after righteousness and glorifying God in our bodies (1st Cor 6:20).
Article by Jack Wellman
Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren Church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Teaching Children the Gospel available on Amazon.
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